Spring break brought my birthday, free time and quarantine

Spring break, the time of friends, family, warm weather. The last real break before summer hits. It’s a time for excitement, this one was going to be extra special on top of all of that, coming up with my sweet 16 on the first day of spring break.

But, as the week of freedom from homework, projects, testing neared the world slowly started to shut down more and more. Covid-19, the virus that has made the headlines globally, and the effort to stop the spread was becoming more and more intense.

I tried to keep optimistic, no local cases had broken and I was sure everything would be fine. My birthday started off as planned, a family dinner at Olive Garden then a trip to Main Event. The dinner went rather smoothly, we enjoyed the Americanized, cheesy, delicious Italian food and I got to open my gifts. As we purchased our passes to Main Event, my phone got a bunch of notifications.

Spring break, in a sense, just got a whole lot longer. With an announcement from Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, schools were to be shut down for safety precautions. I was forced to face the reality of the virus creating chaos.

Perhaps selfishly we continued our way around Main Event, we’d already paid for their Monday Night Madness passes and didn’t want to head home. As we did our activities, sanitizing every few moments, I couldn’t help but wonder what the rest of the week would be like. A lockdown. Kansas City, my city turned into somewhat of a ghost town as I’d never seen before.

As I got home that evening, showering the public germs off as quickly as possible, I did what no teenager wants to do over spring break, I thought about school. How would this work? I still had a week to wait until I found out.

As spring break carried on, as much as an introvert as I am, I found myself lonely sitting in my house with nothing but the internet and my dogs. With as much privilege that normally is, I was sad. I couldn’t visit my friends, spend time with my family outside of my house, anything. I allowed myself to spiral into entertainment. Starting four different series at once, reading a new book on top of practicing my own writing. Anything to keep me occupied.

This spring break was like no other, with the knowledge I essentially wasn’t allowed to do quite a few things, I’d felt the urge to do more and more than I normally ever do. As I write this, it’s the same situation.

This unique, prolonged time at home wasn’t the way I planned my spring break, but it still ended up being worthwhile. Being able to catch up on the things I like that schoolwork hadn’t allowed me to indulge in, maybe this shut down wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

As we, society, rest as much as possible indoors. Distance ourselves from each other and germs, the world is healing. I started to see more and more beauty online. Stories from around the globe of rivers clearing up, deer and geese freely wandering the empty roads, mother nature going back to her old self.

What I learned from this spring break, and my overall review of it is it was a learning experience. It wasn’t thrilling, adventurous or any other thing one might relate to a spring break but it was relaxing, productive in its own forced quarantine, pandemic way.